Poetry as Defense Mechanism

Cliffs: I was bored during meetings and wrote some silly poems.

This weekend the school took all of the new faculty members on an overnight retreat. We stayed in a really cute town in the countryside less than an hour from here, and the surrounding area was just gorgeous. Unfortunately we didn't get a lot of time to enjoy it all because we were stuck inside providing feedback to the administration about our first month's work experience. While the meetings actually went a lot better than I anticipated, (and the meals we had were incredible) lots of the comments were rather repetitive, negative, and just plain time consuming.

So one thing that I do when I begin to get frustrated and bored is write stupid poetry. It keeps me entertained and gives me a harmless outlet for my growing tension. Fortunately for me, my friend “D” also likes to use poetry to disengage from the negative atmosphere, so we shared our work back and forth. On this particular occasion, our format of choice was the haiku. I’ve labeled the two that she came up with, and the first one she wrote for me made me laugh really hard. This was awkward because I had to do it silently and I was shaking with tears coming out of my eyes—fairly inappropriate for an official meeting, I know, but I had my back to the majority of the room, so don’t be too embarrassed mom.

(As some background information—not that you really care—earlier in the week I had fallen in love with a stuffed ram at the school gift shop, and then at the end of meetings we had a drawing to win various school paraphernalia. “Inshallah” means “God willing.” And finally, at our multiple tea breaks, people were raving about these butterfly-shaped sugar cookies, but I never got to try one.)


Under a plastic glass,
frantically seeking escape,
I'm trapped like this fly.


small slips of paper
may it mean a tiny ram
inshallah. door prize.
--D

Bread and tea abound,
but don't create fertile ground.
Thoughts, like seeds, need sun.


Butterfly goodness
fluttered out of reach again.
Bring back the cookies.


Stuffed to discomfort,
Needing exercise, and still
considering food.


To D:
Imposing on you.
Apathy and lack of task
breed poor poetry.


Every haiku
feedback poster can't compare
distant rooster crows.
--D